USGS Earthquake Intelligence

Extract real-time and historical earthquake data from the US Geological Survey (USGS) worldwide seismic monitoring network.

Overview

This actor fetches structured earthquake data from the USGS API. It's useful for applications in news, risk assessment, emergency planning, and research. You can retrieve global events, filter by location or predefined regions, and get detailed metrics for each quake.

Key Features

• Real-time & Historical Data: Access the latest seismic events or past earthquakes.
• Flexible Filtering: Get data by geographic coordinates (latitude/longitude/radius) or choose from predefined seismic regions.
• Rich Data Output: Each record includes magnitude, location, depth, timestamp, tsunami alerts, and impact assessments.
• Predefined Regions: Quickly fetch data for active zones:
  • California (Western US fault lines)
  • Japan (Pacific Ring of Fire)
  • Indonesia (Sunda Arc)
  • Chile (Nazca Plate boundary)
  • Alaska (Aleutian subduction zone)
  • Mediterranean (Alpine-Himalayan belt)

How to Use

Configure the actor via input settings. The main options are:

1. By Region: Select one of the predefined regions (e.g., california).
2. By Coordinates: Provide latitude, longitude, and radius_km to define a custom search area.
3. Timeframe: Optionally set startTime and endTime in ISO format (e.g., 2024-01-01T00:00:00) for historical data. Defaults to the past day.

Run the actor. It will fetch the data, and the results will be available in the dataset as structured JSON items.

Input / Output

Input Configuration (examples):

// Example 1: Get earthquakes in California
{ "region": "california" }

// Example 2: Get earthquakes within 200km of Tokyo
{
  "latitude": 35.6762,
  "longitude": 139.6503,
  "radius_km": 200
}

Output Data:
Each earthquake record in the dataset includes the following fields:
* id - Unique USGS event identifier.
* magnitude & magnitude_type - Richter scale value and type (e.g., ml, mw).
* severity - Categorized as minor, light, moderate, strong, or major.
* place - Human-readable location description.
* time - UTC timestamp of the event.
* latitude, longitude, depth_km - Epicenter coordinates and depth.
* tsunami_warning - Boolean indicating a tsunami alert.
* alert - PAGER impact alert level (green, yellow, orange, red).
* felt_reports, cdi, mmi - Community-reported intensity data.
* significance - USGS significance score.
* url - Link to the official USGS event page.

Example Output Item:

{
  "id": "nc75273276",
  "magnitude": 4.2,
  "magnitude_type": "ml",
  "severity": "light",
  "place": "7 km NW of The Geysers, CA",
  "time": "2025-12-02T21:10:03+00:00",
  "latitude": 38.811,
  "longitude": -122.819,
  "depth_km": 3.34,
  "tsunami_warning": false,
  "alert": "green",
  "significance": 70,
  "url": "https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/nc75273276"
}

Pricing: $0.001 per earthquake record (PAY_PER_RESULT).